The Lamb — Restaurant in London

A pub I've been meaning to write up for a while but haven't been too sure on when to dive into it. It's a local community pub, one of the very few independent ones in the area, but one I barely frequent, and I've not really got a good reason as to why.

The first trip I went here, it was a cold covidy afternoon, and I was relegated to the sea of sofas in the garden. Collected together, like the aftermath of a flood having ripped through the front rooms of an entire village, a mish mash of the comfiest seats a pub garden has ever seen.

To get there you'd need to hop on through the pub, greeted by locals playing board games with a nod, a lone bloke chewing the ear off the bar staff about the complexities of the Marvel universe pausing only to let you order, or a live band in the corner on Thursday & Sundays.

A beer fridge is well stocked, keg beers are your accessible macro gear, but most come for the ale. Expertly kept rotating cask selection; you'll typically find Oakham, Surrey Hills or a couple of obscurer local breweries. Invariably served with a sparkler.

The pub itself dates back to the late 1800s, and even used to have a small brewery on site, but it's only since Liz and Adam took it over that it's become this beacon of light amongst a sea of Young's pubs. It won multiple CAMRA awards in the mid 2010s, and continues to champion quality ale.

Food wise they've chopped and changed. BBQ burger nights, slow pulled meats and veggie options, cheese nights too, and on the weekend I went they had "Emma" (forgot the IG tag), churning out Middle Eastern dishes, orders coming in early doors on a Sunday. Bar snacks knocking about, but few pubs in the area offer their location up to pop-ups, so it's nice to see the variety.

It's a cosy place, you'll not find another one like it really, and to get 2 (good) pints south of a tenner in these parts is worthy of praise alone. Having done almost double digit visits now, I've never had the same experience twice in terms of locals, beers, Rona rules and food, yet the vibe remains the same. Welcoming, hospitable and inviting - a pub fully deserving of all the praise the locals have...

The Lamb is that rarest of things, a proper local pub. It's not pretty, but it is comfortable, friendly, cosy and run by the brilliant Adam and Liz Lewis. I have to be honest with you here, folks; I'm chums with the landlords. So you can either treat this as a "trying to get a free pint" review (which I know won't work - I was there last night) or as an entirely honest appraisal of a place that has become rather important to me.

The Lamb does the basic pub job very well indeed; there are various guest beers, it has a good range of wine, spirits and bottled beers and lagers and most importantly that range of booze is served to you by decent and efficient bar staff. What the Lamb excels at, though, is engaging its guests. It boasts a lively and ever-changing array of musical talent, the regulars are friendly and most important of all the landlords have become friendly with their regulars. On top of that they run regular events (COVID 19 not withstanding - more on that in a bit); the Christmas and Halloween events are the stuff of legend, as is their annual Disco Tent event (as in "Now Is The Winter of Our Disco Tent" - yes, really). It's a place to go and have a quiet pint, and sometimes a place to go and properly let your hair down.

Since COVID 19 has come along, Adam and Liz have adapted the business to embrace social distancing and social bubbles, using a dedicated app to order drinks and making use of the substantial beer garden to allow distanced tables and a new musical stage - it's not the old Lamb, but it has thoroughly embraced the new Normal, and it works well. For those of you who are nervous about social drinking in 2020, you might want to give this a crack.

The Lamb manages to be a comfortable little pub for a casual visit, and if you so choose it very soon becomes somewhere you will want to return to again and again and again. It's a place where friends are made.

I don't think I can give it any higher...

Over the years I have grown to love The Lamb more and more: a home from home with a creative, intelligent, interactive and broad-minded clientele and staff. From live music to life drawing, The Lamb ticks all the boxes when it comes to being a proper community pub and creates a haven for people to congregate, socialise and make new friends. The food here is great and often caters for vegetarians (but just give them a call to check food is being served at the time you are planning to go). Outdoor seating is considerately covered and heated and blankets are provided in colder weather. The pub cat is a sweetheart too. Once you go a few times, you'll struggle to feel so at home at any other establishment! In the photos, you can see Sally In The Woods performing recently. I took a video but it had no sound for some weird...